“What name?”
Mr. Felix Main hesitated.
“I am speaking from the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard,” he announced confidentially.
The man withdrew. In a moment Andrew took his place.
“Well, what is it?” he asked.
“Sorry to trouble you, my lord,” Felix Main apologised, trying to disguise his voice and make it sound as official as possible, “but we wanted to know the exact amount of the reward offered for the return of the Glenlitten necklace?”
“Any news of it?” Andrew asked quickly.
“Can’t go quite so far as that, my lord, but we wish to know the amount of the reward.”
“I thought I made that clear when I saw the Inspector,” was the curt reply. “Ten thousand pounds.”
“I am much obliged to you, my lord,” Felix Main said, and rang off.
He went back to the table. For a long time he stood there, letting the little stream of diamonds pass, one by one, through his fingers. It was not until the hour drew near for his wife’s return that he found the heart to part with them. Then he descended the stairs, opened up his office, hid the necklace in a secret cavity of his safe, and went thoughtfully back to his rooms.
CHAPTER XXV
It was a bad time for pheasants at Glenlitten, a good time for the cartridge makers, for the keepers, for the patients in hospitals who were the recipients of most of the game shot. Some of the guests departed, but others took their places. Sir Richard, deeply engaged in a great blackmail case, had been forced to leave but was expected back. Philip had arrived, with the full intention of staying some time, and Félice was not allowed to have a dull moment. Twenty miles southward, a man in Winchester jail spent days of horror and nights cold and clammy with fear. He suffered the terrors of the rope a dozen times over. It was fear more than illness which kept him in the hospital. The physician and chaplain talked to him in vain. He was a man beside himself— unreasonable, incoherent in his abuse and declamations.
“There’s some one done it on me about that revolver,” he kept on insisting. “I’ve never hurt man, woman or child in my life, but if I knew who it was, I’d tear the b——y heart out of him. Some devil going free, with all those diamonds safely hidden away, and me jugged here. And that’s not enough, but they must try to make me swing for what I never did.”
“You brood too much over your sin,” the chaplain told him. “Try and make your peace, so that if the worst comes—”
“Leave off!” the frantic man interrupted. “Leave off, I tell you! That one wasn’t mine. I never killed no one. If I swing for it—for what I never did— what’s the good of your God to me? If the truth comes out, and the murderer is caught, then you can talk religion to me if you want to. I may believe then there may be summat in what you’re preaching about, but I can’t believe it if I’m going to be done out of this world because some one else put that chap’s light out. Quit it, Guv’nor. I’ll do my five years all right. You come and talk the Lord Almighty to me then. I’ll listen, I promise you—but I’ve got to know first—I’ve got to know.”
The man made an impression upon those immediately around him. Even Major Hartopp, the Chief Constable, was affected by his ceaseless repudiations. One day, shooting with Andrew, he spoke about it.
“That poor chap Drayton gets worse and worse,” he remarked, as they were sitting around after lunch in one of the keepers’ cottages. “He owns up about the burglary all right. He’s going to plead guilty to that, but he goes off his head when any one speaks of the killing part of it. He would have heard through his lawyer, of course, sooner or later, about the finding of the revolver, but one of the warders let it out, and he’s pretty nearly crazy about it.”
“Are you going to hang him?” Haslam asked.
“I’m afraid so,” the Chief Constable admitted. “I’m not a sentimentalist, but if there’s anything in the world I hate it’s a hanging. We haven’t had one at Winchester for years.”
“Can’t hate it more than I do,” Manfield declared gloomily. “Thank God for under sheriffs.”
“Lady Glenlitten seems to have been very good to the poor fellow’s wife,” Hartopp observed, turning towards his host. “He gets perfectly inarticulate when he speaks about her.”
Andrew nodded.
“Félice is terribly upset about the whole affair,” he confided. “I shouldn’t mention it if I were you. It’s a damned pity the lights were not up in the room when the tragedy occurred and she didn’t see the whole thing, whatever it may have cost her at the time. As it is, she can’t get it out of her mind that by some miraculous means or other another person fired that shot.”
“Cotton hasn’t given the case up,” Hartopp said. “He’s getting together quite a lot of testimony about the direction of the bullet and that sort of thing. All the same, unless further evidence is produced, I’m afraid it will be rather difficult to convince a jury that Drayton isn’t the man.”
“Don’t say that, for God’s sake, before Félice,” Andrew begged, as they walked to their stands.
“Over on the left!”
A high cock pheasant, rising as he flew at a tremendous speed, caught Manfield swinging a shade too slowly, and escaped. Glenlitten grinned.
“Does these swagger shots good to miss a bird now and then,” he remarked. “Here’s your place, Hartopp. Follow on to the right afterwards, for the next stand.”
Andrew himself plunged along a narrow drive into the heart of the wood, intending to come down on the outside of the beaters. He decided to let the birds go back after a certain point and, adjusting his stick, sat and waited. He was in the very midst of the wood, soundless, except for a slight ripple of breeze every now and then amongst the tree tops. It was like the silence before the storm, as though every species of animal knew of the terror to come and had already found its hiding place. Even a squirrel, after a plucky display of indifference at his motionless presence, dashed away. Andrew, subconsciously aware of his detachment, found his thoughts wandering. A new gravity stole into his face as he sat and pondered. There was something wrong with Félice— therefore there was something wrong with the world. After months of buoyant, gloriously infectious happiness, she was suddenly looking out upon life with different eyes—eyes that were sometimes heavy with fear. She made a brave show. She was still apparently the light-hearted hostess, gay and sparkling, popular with every one, adored by her few intimates—but he knew. There was something behind it all, something which swept over her in such quiet moments as he himself was now experiencing. There was something in her mind which she was keeping to herself. That was what hurt him. He had so easily discovered all her little troubles when first they had been married. A carelessly lost pocketbook one day, an exorbitant milliner’s bill, trifles which she had confided sweetly enough after a few hours’ worrying. But this was different. He tried so hard to look at the matter clearly. It was something which concerned that poor fellow Drayton, tortured in his prison by horrible fears, which concerned too, somewhere or other, somehow or other, that tall, silent youth who had come to give Félice a dancing lesson and whom he had discovered— Ugh! His confidence in his wife was illimitable, but the memory of that moment was a revolting one. Indirectly, Haslam seemed to be in it too, although one could not tell exactly where. And there was Dick Cotton, still full of his chivalrous admiration of Félice, and yet with some sort of understanding with her from which he was excluded. Charles de Suess was the mystery figure in the picture. So far as he knew, so far as he could possibly tell, Félice had met him for the first time the night when he had been brought